


Who Will Wake Them?

by butterflybaby91



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: AU, Blood, Canon Era, Gen, He doesn't wake up in time, M/M, Suicide, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflybaby91/pseuds/butterflybaby91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire doesn't wake up in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Will Wake Them?

**Author's Note:**

> This was a prompt I received for the fic war thing!

Somehow, he managed to sleep through almost everything. He could sleep through bar fights, the worst storms, freezing cold, blistering heat, and the hourly ringing of the bells of Notre Dame. He could even sleep through the meeting of Les Amis de l’ABC—at least when someone other than Enjolras was speaking.

But, he had never managed to sleep through one of Enjolras’ talks. They were always too interesting to watch. He could stay awake for hours, even through a wine induced haze, listening to the man go on and on. Grantaire only ever had a vague idea of what Enjolras was actually saying, but just watching him in his element, in front of an audience, shining like the sun that he was, had always been enough to keep Grantaire firmly in the land of consciousness.

He could not for the life of him figure out what had gone wrong this time.

After the barricade had been built, Grantaire had wandered into the wine shop to pass some of the following hours drinking and avoiding the preliminary skirmishes. He thought that if and when the worst happened he would wake up. Even his subconscious could usually not ignore anything that involved Enjolras.

What had happened, he wondered. Grantaire had awoken with a start, blearily surveying the downstairs room of the wine shop. Destruction surrounded him. Debris covered the floor—parts of the walls and ceiling had been blown in by canon blasts—and bodies littered the floor. Grantaire felt sick as he recognized the man lying a few yards away from him to be Feuilly. The man’s eyes stared blankly at Grantaire, glassy and forever unseeing.

He slowly stood, clutching his bottle, as the last tie to his former life, as he began to move around the room. He found Joly’s body lying in a mangled heap outside the front door, only yards away from Bossuet’s, whose hand was stretched out toward the medical student, as if trying to even share death with his best friend. He repressed a sob, as he found sweet Jehan, with two bullet holes through his head and one through his torso, toward the side of the barricade, leaning up against a door, the happiness and ferocity he had eluded, gone from his person. Bahorel lay a few feet away, a single bullet in his forehead, having lost his final fight.

Running inside, Grantaire closed his eyes as he passed Feuilly and headed for the stairs, hoping to rise above the trauma of seeing his friends so harshly murdered. How could he have slept through such obliteration of the most important people in his world?

It was not until he had reached the top of the stairs that he paused, as he sensed the stillness of the air, and became fearful for what he might find on the upper floor. At the crown of the stairs he gulped as he saw the blood pooling and beginning to trickle down the stairs. Inching forward, Grantaire pressed a hand to the side of his face, hoping and yet unable to shield himself from the horror before him, as he rounded the corner to the main area.

Grantaire’s stomach dropped as he found Combeferre and Courfeyrac, lying side by side. He gently closed their lifeless eyes, focusing his attention solely on the two men before him, scared to look around and see where their leader lay, for he was never far from Combeferre and Courfeyrac—Grantaire knew he was somewhere nearby.

Repressing a shudder, Grantaire stood, eyes closed, steeling himself to explore the rest of the room. Taking a deep breath, he looked around, and his eyes immediately fell on the window.

There, looking like an avenging angel even in death, hung Enjolras, half in the building, half out of the window, dangling from his beloved red flag—the symbol of everything he held dear, as tattered and destroyed as all those whom he had loved.

Grantaire edged closer, tears running down his face. He gently reached out a hand and touched Enjolras’ knee, “How could this happen?” he muttered. Realistically, he had known that this would probably be their fates, but he had expected to die with them. Why he thought he would be able to actually succeed in an endeavor he did not know, but apparently, he was even incapable of dying with those he cared about and the man he believed in. Judging by the positioning of his friends’ bodies throughout the building, Grantaire deduced that Enjolras had been the last to go, dying alone, facing off the National Guard, all by himself—the thought of this brave, idealistic, man dying as alone as Grantaire now felt, made the tears course harder down Grantaire’s cheeks.

“I’m sorry Enjolras,” he choked out, wiping at his eyes with his free hand, his other still clutching the cursed bottle that was the only reason Grantaire was still alive, “Just once, I wanted to be there for you; to show that I was capable of something…and…and I failed you again,” he released a shuddering, broken sob and let himself become overcome by tears for a few moments. Pulling himself together, he glanced around the room once more. Spotting a forgotten gun lying in the corner, Grantaire reached out and grasped it tightly in his shaking hand. Turning once more to Enjolras he vowed, “But that will be the last time that I fail you. Friends,” he cried, turning to face the building filled with the dead bodies of the only men he had known as such, “I may not have been able to join in your cause in life, but I certainly will be able to join you in your death. Vive la republic!” he cried, before turning to face Enjolras’ prone form. He raised the gun to his head, but did not close his eyes as it cocked—he kept them glued to the fallen angel before him.

Once the retort sounded, Grantaire fell to Enjolras’ feet. As the life faded from his body, he saw the smiling spirit of Enjolras, surrounded by their other friends, reaching out a hand to pull him onward to a new life.

When his corpse was found later, amongst the others, his sleeping face wore the smile his lips had formed as he breathed his last and gone on to join the dead.

 


End file.
